2006-2007 Speakers Bureau Catalog
ROBIN MELLO
Robin Mello is an assistant professor of theatre and education, a storyteller, and a scholar whose research revolves around the evolution of gender roles and women's history. She is also a spinner and ethnographer who has collected stories about spinning and women's work in her narrative research. Currently, Mello teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she is director of the K-12 Theatre Education Program.
Address: 7330 Saint James Street, Wauwatosa, WI 53213
Phone: 414-476-0421 (home), 414-229-606 (work), 414-229-2728 (fax)
E-mail: rmello@uwm.edu
Women's Work and Spinning Tales
Mello provides an interactive lecture/demonstration that focuses on women's work—housework and spinning in particular. This performance takes audience members through the anthropology of women's working roles, as well as the history of fiber preparation, with an emphasis on flax and wool, and fiber processing during the nineteenth century. Demonstrations of spinning with spindle and wheel give participants a hands-on experience of what it takes to produce a garment from sheep to shawl. Interwoven with historical and technological information are folktales and narratives that depict spinning and other household tasks that were part of women's farm employment at the time.
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